Against all expectations Marcel Fe&#769;ron has made a &ldquo;normal&rdquo; life in a bucolic French suburb in the Ardennes. But on May 10, 1940, as Nazi tanks approach, this timid, happy man must abandon his home and confront the &ldquo;Fate&rdquo; that he has secretly awaited. Separated from his pregnant wife and young daughter in the chaos of flight, he joins a freight car of refugees hurtling southward ahead of the pursuing invaders. There, he meets Anna, a sad-looking, dark- haired girl, whose accent is &ldquo;neither Belgian nor German,&rdquo; and who &ldquo;seemed foreign to everything around her.&rdquo; As the mystery of Anna&rsquo;s identity is gradually revealed, Marcel leaps from the heights of an exhilarating freedom to the depths of a terrifying responsibility&mdash; one that will lead him to a blood-chilling choice.<br><br>When it first appeared in English in 1964, British novelist and critic Brigid Brophy declared The Train to be &ldquo;the novel his admirers had been expecting all along from Simenon.&rdquo; Until The Train, she wrote, the dazzlingly prolific novelist had been &ldquo;a master without a masterpiece.&rdquo;